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Last week I had the pleasure of doing sound for Rock n’ Roll Camp for Girls San Diego, a nonprofit music camp aimed at empowering young women through music. The girls — ranging in age from 8 – 17 — were tasked with learning an instrument, forming a band, and writing an original song, all within five days. The campers then went on to perform the music at the House of Blues downtown. Very cool. Upon arrival the first day, I quickly found that I had my work cut out for me — well, we all did. The camp space was a performing arts center with one decent size auditorium and a smaller “fun room,” along with several rehearsal spaces. In addition to helping with general tech, I did live sound during both a daily morning jam session and a lunchroom performance, plus a grand HOB dress rehearsal in the …Continue reading →

I remember the first time I heard The Residents. Nothing could have prepared me for such a unique onslaught of noises (most of which were initially unpleasing to my ears). And yet, something told me to continue listening past the point of wanting to tap out — I guess I had faith that it would all make sense at some point. It eventually did, but in order to reach that level my musical orientation needed a complete repositioning. It recently occurred to me that most of the music I have come to love presented with a rather steep learning curve. Frank Zappa and Mr. Bungle come to mind, both of which produced sounds that were simply not very welcoming to new listeners. In fact, in relation to Zappa, one Redditor summarized the listener’s response cycle for each album, broken up into four stages: Stage 1: What is this shit? Stage …Continue reading →

The first time I used software amp modeling it was out of pure necessity rather than personal preference. At the time (somewhere around 2007) I had just graduated to Logic from Garageband and was in a living situation where I could not crank an amp without it leading to an angry knock at the door. So, I played around with the built in guitar amp plugs for that version of Logic and found something that was a least a step up from the DI signal. But, I was never really satisfied with how the guitar sounded and figured I would always need to mic my amp in order to get tone that was tasteful enough to record. Little did I know at the time, but in a few years I would be relying almost exclusively on amp modeling for studio tracking my music as well as my clients. While none …Continue reading →

I absolutely love the show Dr. Katz. In what might be my favorite episode, DK has been asked to give a guest lecture as part of an adult education course (to which he is clearly ill prepared for). As Katz starts orally composing his speech, he gets caught up in critically analyzing each word of his opening, until everything sounds completely crazy to him. The same thing, of course, happens in mixing. Once I have completed a project, I can rarely ever listen back without becoming somewhat nauseated. Presumably, this means I have essentially “listened to failure” as they might say in the weight room. In other words, there is a level of saturation that occurs with all art forms, in which a person not only stops experiencing any joy by consuming the product, but the art actually worsens your mood. We have all experienced this with certain pop songs …Continue reading →

Volumes have been written on how important good acoustics are to a mixing room, and there are plenty of how-to guides out there that can help you through the process of creating these atmospheres in your home studio. When I first started out, I treated these recommendations as if they were unbreakable laws. I became obsessed with fixing every imperfection in my space, and would evaluate the the sound quality of the places I went (offices, gyms, hotel lobbies, etc.). It got to the point where I actually listed “bad acoustics” as a legitimate reason to quit a restaurant job I was working at the time. In time I discovered that the pursuit of the perfect listening room was becoming a major limitation for me. Not only did I not find the process all that interesting, but I was also becoming less trustworthy any speakers that were not my home …Continue reading →

My first attempt at studio tracking a band — outside of one that I played in — was for a punk group called Doll Fight!. This was a single song recording project, which would be featured on an upcoming compilation album. At the time, I was severely hamstrung when it came to both gear and the recording space (which in this case turned out to be a friend’s very acoustically unfriendly guest room). For the kit, I think I went with two condenser overheads and maybe a SM57 on the kick drum (if even that). The guitar went through a Metal Zone and was then DI’d along with the bass. We did two or three takes, followed by quick vocal overdubs and some saxophone. In the end, it took about an hour or so and we were all relatively pleased with the result. However, I remember at the time thinking …Continue reading →